


drawn together by the flame

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e11 Haven, F/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 14:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: Deanna marries Wyatt. Their relationship might be unconventional, but it works for them. (AU of 1x11 'Haven'.)





	drawn together by the flame

**i.**

Two days after she met him, Deanna married Wyatt. The ceremony was the compromise their parents had agreed upon: Lwaxana sailed about the room in nothing more than a ceremonial heirloom headdress, tossing out comments that enraged Wyatt’s mother and made the captain blush; Wyatt’s father was self-consciously naked and kept trying to hide behind the pot-plants, but did his part; and Wyatt himself stood before her, smiling and unashamed, and made the whole thing a lot easier. She smiled back at him, and took his hands, and said her vows, and meant them.

Will didn’t come, didn’t dance at her wedding, didn’t send his apologies. It hurt, in her heart and her mind, in the places filled up with _Imzadi_ , but she understood.

 

**ii.**

Four days after she met him, once his parents had boarded a passenger ship back to Earth and Lwaxana had set course for Vulcan, Wyatt announced that he had no intention of making her to move back to Betazed. They were drinking hot tea on the sofa in her quarters, Deanna curled on one end and Wyatt on the other, when he set his cup down and said it.

‘I know you don’t want to leave Starfleet, Deanna. This is your career. This is your dream.’

Deanna shook her head, surprised by the lack of emotional turmoil she sensed in him; this decision hadn’t been hard for him to make. ‘But what about your dream?’

‘My dream has always been to help people, to cure the ill. I can do that just as well from here as I can from Betazed. In fact, I’d say I can do it even better from here.’

‘But you don’t want to be a Starfleet officer, do you?’

‘Not really, no,’ Wyatt admitted. ‘But this is the flagship of the Federation. Civilians already live aboard this ship. I could be a medical aide, or a nurse, or—’

His excited desperation to get his point across burst over her mind like sunlight, and she laughed. ‘All right, all right! If you really want to stay here with me, then we’ll go and talk to Captain Picard. I’m sure he’ll be able to arrange something.’

Captain Picard did arrange something; he pulled some strings and had Wyatt admitted to the Starfleet Medical Team as a consultant. He was already a practicing doctor, licenced on Earth and fully qualified in Xenobiology – he had even been working on a cure for the now-extinct Terellian Plague – so as long as he promised not to carry a phaser, and not to accompany Starfleet personnel on away missions, Starfleet Command would leave him be. Beverly was delighted; they had taken an immediate shine to each other, and were professionally as well as personally compatible. The three of them sat in Ten Forward that night and toasted Picard’s diplomacy skills and their good fortune.

‘Well, I for one am very glad you didn’t move back to Betazed,’ Beverly said, clinking her glass of wine against Deanna’s, and then against Wyatt’s. ‘Both of you. I’d have missed you terribly.’ She eyed Deanna, bright and blue, and Deanna felt the warm slide of affectionate friendship through her mind. ‘And it would have been a great shame to lose you too, Wyatt.’

‘You’re too kind, Doctor,’ Wyatt said. ‘Thank you again for welcoming me so generously into your staff.’

‘You say that now,’ Deanna teased, nudging her foot against Beverly’s beneath the table. ‘Just wait until you see how hard she works you.’

Wyatt laughed, but Beverly just smiled and didn’t deny it.

‘Hold on,’ Beverly said, after a moment of sipping in pleasant silence. ‘Have you told your _mother_ you’re staying in Starfleet?’

‘I’m married, aren’t I?’ Deanna said, smiling over at Wyatt. ‘She can’t have it both ways.’

 

**iii.**

Two months after she met him, Wyatt came back to their quarters and said, ‘Commander Riker just asked me to play Parrises Squares with him.’

Deanna, who had felt the spin of both their thoughts the moment it happened, looked up from watering her orchids and said, ‘And?’

‘And… well. It has to be progress, doesn’t it? I’m hopeless at Parrises Squares, but I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t want him to think I was snubbing him.’

‘He wouldn’t have thought that,’ Deanna said fondly, ‘but it was generous of you to accept anyhow.’ She smiled, and walked over to rub her hands along his arms. ‘You see? I told you he’d come around.’

‘That you did,’ Wyatt murmured. He slid his arms around her waist and dropped a kiss to her lips, lingering there in her smile. ‘Of course you were right. One of these days I’ll learn that you always are.’

‘You will if you know what’s good for you.’

He laughed, and drew away from her to rummage in the closet for his sportswear. ‘I’d better get changed,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to be late to lose at my least favourite sport.’

The next day, as she’d suspected, Will came to see her in her office. She knew it was him – she always knew it was him, just as he always knew that she knew – but he still knocked, still waited for her to permit him to enter before he did. He hovered in the doorway, as uncertain as she’d ever seen him, and then he sighed heavily and dropped his head. ‘Oh, Deanna, I’m so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?’

His fear was wound so tight in his chest she could almost see it, pulsing and dark; she could do nothing but hold out a hand, beckon him closer, and say, ‘I already have.’

He collapsed onto the sofa beside her like a ragdoll, gathering her up in his arms; he was larger than Wyatt, warmer where he engulfed her, and she embraced the familiar thrill of having him touch her, and breathed him in. They stayed there for a long time, speaking without words, and then Will pulled back and murmured, ‘We shouldn’t do this.’ He sounded defeated, his emotions greying around the edges and turning dim.

‘Doing what?’

‘You know what,’ he said. He shook his head. ‘Deanna, you’re… you’re married. You’re married to someone else. We can’t be—’

‘Sharing a moment of friendship? Holding one another?’

‘Enjoying it,’ he said. He flicked his eyes up and held hers steady. ‘Enjoying _this_ , the way we used to.’

‘You’re the only one who feels that way, Will.’

‘It isn’t right.’

She pulled back a little further to stroke a hand down the side of his face. He looked tortured; he turned his head into her hand and then away again, as though he’d been caught doing something heinously wrong. ‘Why isn’t it right?’

‘I… I can’t talk about it. Not yet. I’m sorry,’ he said again.

Deanna shook her head gently, and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘There’s no hurry. I’m here, ready to talk to you, if you change your mind. Wyatt’s here, too.’ After a moment, she asked, ‘Did you play a good game last night?’

Will finally cracked a smile at that, and an impish spark of pride in his thoughts cracked along with it. ‘I wiped the floor with him, Deanna. He was terrible! Has he even played Parrises Squares before?’

She grinned and said, ‘You’ll have to ask him. Maybe he’ll be up for a rematch?’

He smiled, a bit sadly, but said, ‘Maybe he will.’

She figured it was progress.

 

**iv.**

Three years after she met him, Deanna nearly died. Her shuttle crashed in an ion storm, marooning her on Lekara IV after Ensign Ferrier’s console exploded in his face; she had just enough energy to rig an emergency homing beacon before she passed out, injured, huddled beneath the shattered console for warmth.

When she woke, Will was setting her down on a biobed in the _Enterprise_ sickbay while Wyatt ran a medical tricorder over her sternum and issued firm, direct orders that belied the terror he was feeling. She reached a weak hand out to grasp Will’s fingers, and she said to Wyatt, in his mind, _I’m here_.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Wyatt said, at the same time Will said, ‘She’s awake.’

Will’s relief was a cascade from his mind to his heart to his stomach, and even semi-conscious, she wasn’t surprised when he bent to kiss her swiftly. ‘I’m so glad you’re all right, Deanna,’ he was murmuring. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, I’m so glad…’ and then he was looking in horror at Wyatt, shame and betrayal and pain because he’d kissed Deanna in front of her husband, and Deanna, near-delirious, wanted to laugh.

 _Help him_ , she thought to Wyatt, and he did: he kissed Deanna himself, right where Will had kissed her, and smiled, reaching over to squeeze Will’s shoulder.

‘It’s all right, Will,’ he said, and his voice was as gentle and kind as ever. ‘We both love her, and she loves both of us. It’s all right.’

*

‘So when you said it was all right…’

‘Yes?’ Deanna prompted, when Will stopped talking.

‘You… you meant it was… you meant it was all right? _Really_?’

‘Really,’ Wyatt said. ‘It’s really all right. Would you like some more hot chocolate?’

‘Yes, please,’ Deanna said, grinning, and Wyatt laughed.

‘I didn’t mean you,’ he said, but he recycled their three empty cups and brought three fresh ones back from the replicator anyway. Will was still digesting the information they had been trying to feed him for three years when Wyatt returned; wisely, he placed the hot cup on the table in front of Will, instead of in his hand.

‘But… but why is it all right?’ Will asked. He looked helplessly between them, his mind a whirr of confusion and suspicion and disbelief and, finally, a shining thread of hope.

‘Because I am not a possessive man, and Deanna is not a possessive woman,’ Wyatt said. ‘And because we both care for you; I know Deanna loves you, and has always loved you, just as I know you have always loved her.’ Will coloured, but Wyatt shook his head. ‘You must understand, Will, there is no shame in this. There is no shame where all parties are honest, and in agreement. I love Deanna, and I know she loves me. I am secure in our marriage, and for us, that security extends to you. If you and Deanna wish to pursue a romantic relationship, you have my blessing.’

‘What he means to say, Will, in the kindest possible way, is that you’re no threat.’

Wyatt barked out a laugh, drained most of his hot chocolate in one gulp, and then glanced down at the chronometer on his PADD. ‘I promised to meet Beverly to discuss her latest play – I’ll leave you two to talk.’ He kissed Deanna’s cheek and stood, pausing to press his hand to the back of Will’s neck. ‘I promise, Will, there is no deception here. No danger. You don’t have to fight it anymore.’

With a last smile at them both, he walked out.

‘Now,’ Deanna said, ‘are you ready to believe us, or would you like to spend another three years asking us to repeat ourselves?’

‘I think,’ Will managed, his voice scratchy, ‘I think I’m ready to believe you. If you’re sure.’ He looked up, and the guarded hope in his eyes spilled across the space between them, lifted Deanna from her chair and moved her to sit beside him. 

‘I’m sure,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure, and Wyatt’s sure. Are you sure?’

Will nodded once, and then twice, and then said, ‘Yes. I’m sure.’ And he finally, _finally_ kissed her.

 

**v.**

‘What do you mean, Wyatt’s not coming? How can you even _think_ of attending an official Fifth House function alone? I simply cannot allow you to—’

‘Oh, no, Mother, I won’t be alone.’

Lwaxana stopped mid-rant and frowned into the viewscreen. ‘You won’t?’

‘No. I’m bringing Will.’

‘Will? Will Riker? You can’t be serious.’

‘I’m deadly serious.’

‘You’re going to parade around an ex-lover at a—’

‘Oh, he isn’t an ex-lover.’

‘But I know you two…’ It took a moment to sink in. ‘Oh. You mean… _oh_.’

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, Mother, that Will and I are lovers again.’

‘But what about—’

‘—and before you ask about Wyatt, I will tell you that of course Wyatt knows, and he approves. He’s happy for me, and for Will, and I’m happy too. We’re all very happy. And I know you are well aware that Betazoids have practised and condoned polyamory for hundreds of years, so I don’t want to hear another word about it.’

Lwaxana blinked a few times, her chest lifting as though in preparation for another rant, and then she let it all out in a sigh. ‘Oh, you’re quite right, of course.’

Now Deanna blinked, stuck halfway between astonished and disappointed. She’d had so many good arguments prepared. ‘I am?’

‘Of course you are, dear. I only got so used to your father’s – dare I say it – backward human views of marriage and sexuality that I assumed you’d be the same, especially when you married a human male. But if you and he are progressive enough to enjoy it, then good for you. And good for that Commander Riker, too. He’s more interesting than I gave him credit for.’

‘Oh. Well.’ Deanna gently slid the astonishment – it was no longer disappointment – aside, and smiled a genuine smile at the woman who would never stop surprising her. ‘Thank you, Mother. For understanding.’

Lwaxana’s answering smile was as warm as if she were there, and Deanna found herself looking forward to the function, looking forward to seeing her. ‘I wish you all great happiness, Little One. Say hello to Wyatt for me, and to Commander Riker. I’ll see you both in a few days.’

‘See you then,’ Deanna said. Still smiling, she went to switch off the transmission, and then Lwaxana said, ‘Make sure you wear the purple dress!’ 

She decided on the spot she’d wear the blue.

 

**vi.**

Seven years after she met him, Wyatt met a woman called Ariana on a Federation supply ship. She was familiar, she was the woman from his drawings, and his cure for the Terellian Plague – perfected a year earlier and distributed by the Federation to the few remaining Terellians alive – had cured her. He was fascinated by her; she was fascinated by him; they struck up a friendship immediately, and Deanna sensed the build of attraction between them from the moment they met.

When Wyatt came to her and told her, she smiled and gave him her blessing. Will, massaging her feet on the sofa, grinned at Wyatt and told him to have fun.

It might have been unconventional, but it worked for them.


End file.
